Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are one of my types of source for this website.  Indigenous societies have a long history of involvement in the spiritual.  They are usually [but not always] drug takers, they often use other forms of proven mechanism to induce spiritual experiences – such as trance, meditation, fasting, isolation, and lucid dreaming – and have a proven record in spiritual healing and the use of plant medicines.  Most indigenous people take it as fact, not a hypothesis that the spiritual world exists and this is because they have experienced it themselves.

Their history and literature is full of legends and myths concerning the spiritual world, as such they share the advantages of the poets and writers in providing often beautiful and richly lyrical accounts of creation and the world of the spiritual.  The difficulty is thus not in the quantity or quality of the literature, but in its interpretation.

Finally, we are indebted to anthropologists, who have for many years made some very good studies of their cultures and tribal practises. As such, even though the myths, legends, practises, beliefs and observations about their spiritual world may not have been documented by the peoples themselves, they have often been documented by an anthropologist.

I homed in on the following people in particular because literature was widely available, of a high standard and accessible

• Native peoples of Meso America – for example Nahua, Huichols, Mixtec, Mixe, Mazatec and  Zapotec indigenous peoples from central Mexico to Oaxaca;
• Celts, the older Scandinavian groups, the Germanic peoples – ancient tribal groups
• Siberian  people and their shamans.
• The Sami people and their shamans
• Parachi-speaking peoples in Afghanistan
• Subarctic Native American tribes – for example the Tlicho
• Indigenous Americans in the United States – for example the Navajo.
• The Magyar (Hungarian) spiritual leaders (the Táltos)
• The Bwiti of West-Central Africa, Gabon, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo.
• The indigenous people of the Amazon basin, the Orinoco basin and their shamans - Brazil, Amazonian Colombia, Amazonian Peru, Amazonian Ecuador and Venezuela.
• Wichi shamans  along the Bermejo River and the Pilcomayo River, in Argentina and Bolivia
• Senoi hunter-gatherers of Malaysia
• Aboriginal/Indigenous Australians

Please note however that this list is not exhaustive, just representative.